


how touching

by epochryphal



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Paper Character, Sexual Dysfunction, Sexual Pain Disorder, Stone Character, Touch Preferences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 19:20:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7119253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epochryphal/pseuds/epochryphal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“hey metts.  my brother may be kinda touchy, but he’s not much of a touch-ee.  you follow?"</p><p>In which much banter obscures but in no way lessens some actual communication, and everyone is precious and figures out how better to complement each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how touching

**Author's Note:**

> *vastly* self-indulgent, oh my god, i just want paper!sans and stone!papyrus and paper mache!mettaton, and also stuff about sensitive bones and *over*sensitivity and just, more things about touch preferences and stuff like vaginismus/dyspareunia but magical idk.
> 
> also, wow i haven't written third-person past-tense in 500 years, this was an Experiment

“oh _god_ ,” breathed Sans, “fuck, _fuck_ , ah too much _ow_ , _shit_ , god _fucking_ dammit.”  He curled in on himself, hugging his sides as he shook and swore.  “ass _._ ”

“Oh dear.”  Though he’d retracted his hands the instant Sans had expressed pain, Mettaton was still holding them up in the air, palms outward like he was trying to surrender to a force he didn’t understand.  “Sorry, are you—ah, what can I do?”

“s’good.”  A bony thumbs-up and a flashy grin accompanied this declaration, their effect somewhat diminished by the grimace that interrupted them.  “bleh.  no really.”  He started to push himself upright but immediately thought the better of it; his next smile was a sliver weaker.  “sorry.  it’ll pass soon.”

“ _You_ certainly don’t need to apologize!”  The as-seen-on-television suaveness of the show host was a bit offset by his nervous stimming, all fidgety-fingered and rocking in place and glancing around for ideas.  “Ugh, you _warned_ me this happens, and here I am blundering into it anyway.  This should be completely preventable if your sensitivity is properly monitored.  And I of all people should be adept at monitoring!  Careless!  Absolutely reprehensible, to have gotten so wrapped up in you as to forget about you!”

“uh, metts?”  Sans aimed a mild wink at the fretting robot.  “maybe less of the ‘i’m such a bad person,’ more of the ‘sorry you feel shitty, i’m here’?”  He shrugged and winced.  “also maybe pillows.”

Mettaton immediately snagged and proffered the fluffiest pillow, its brilliant magenta outmatched by the glow behind his cheekplates.  He ducked his head in embarrassed apology as Sans carefully adjusted himself.  “And there I go doing exactly what I was talking about all over again.  You’re right, darling.”  He looked again around the plush-yet-sparse interior of his house.  “I’d offer you some ice, but Blooky’s the one with the fridge…”

That elicited a shiver and another wince.  “nah, it’s not like.  proper inflammation or anything.  just freaky bone hypersensitization.”  Sans wiggled his fingers like he was telling a spoooooky story, one that would probably have more effect if it was being told to someone who wasn’t a ghost or a skeleton.  “good thing i don’t like walking.  or wearing pants.”

His partner still wasn’t smiling, so Sans fake-punched him in the noodley bicep to get his attention.  “hey.  it happens.  even you can’t guarantee a perfect shoot on the first take, right?”

Mettaton pursed his lips at this unpleasant truth, the spitting image of a displeased superstar contemplating how to improve a scene, then abruptly brightened like a row of floodlights flicking on.  “Absolutely right.”  He leaned in, eyes lidded, all sinuous and seductive.  “So.”  He raked his eyes over the skeleton, head to toe, and lowered his voice an octave.  “When do I get another shot at you?”

Sans burst out laughing.

After a beat, Mettaton was snickering and then full-out laughing too, the two of their voices filling up the cozy abode with warmth.

When Sans was finished wiping the tears of true hilarity from his eyes, and Mettaton was done fanning himself to prevent overheating, they looked at each other and grinned.

“Didn’t hurt yourself laughing at me so hard, did you, darling?”

“meh.  worth it.”

“I take it you’ll be needing a while to recover.”

“gimme a week, yeah.”

“A _week_?”  Whoops, pitch modulator squealed a bit there.

“hey, who’s the one with a strict maintenance schedule here?”

“Fine, fine!  You know your body better than I do – _for now_ …”

“seriously?”

They giggled at each other again, and flawless metal lips brushed against bare skull.

“Shall I carry you to your resting place, my dear?”

“aw, you’re gonna make papyrus think i’m actually dying.”

“No touch for an _entire week_?  I certainly would be.”

“yeah yeah.  that’s why you’ve got two of us.  you carrying me or what?”

“Oh look, my batteries suddenly need recharging.”

“you lazy fuc— _oop_ ”

And with that, Mettaton swooped up the small skeleton bridal-style and carried him blushing through the underground, pillow wedged carefully in place.

 

* * *

 

“Ka- _sighhhhhh_.”

Mettaton rolled off the couch and onto the floor with a clank.  A high-pitched whine, more tea kettle than overworked tech, floated up from his new resting place.  Papyrus stirred through it all, too busy humming to himself over a pot of just-spaghetti-no-water.

No incidental trombone.  Sans really was still recovering.

 _God_ , how boring.

“Paaaaa-pyyyyyyy.”  He dragged himself across the carpet to within view of the kitchen and beeped pitifully, the lights of his display a disordered scramble of yellow and red, less a semblance of a face and more of a pixelated distress call.  “Pay attention to meeeeeeeeeeee.”

Some part of this display must have caught the dedicated chef’s attention, for though he did not miss a beat or look away at all, the humming cut off into silence.  Mettaton was about to complain again when his uninjured boyfriend began to speak.

“I WOULD APOLOGIZE FOR NOT FOCUSING ON YOU, METTATON, BUT THIS WELLNESS SPAGHETTI REQUIRES MY COMPLETE CONCENTRATION!  AND ALSO YOU ARE THE REASON MY BROTHER NEEDS IT.”  Cue rectangular wince.  “WHICH IS UNDERSTANDABLE!  NOT EVERYONE HAS THE FINE MOTOR CONTROL OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS!!”  Annnnd cue wondering just how much experience the brothers had with touching each other.  Full-blown derail into visualization and oh, my, that’s much less boring, and was the stove on too high because it’s rather hot in here.

“SECONDARY ALSO!”  He was still going, bless him.  “WAS IT NOT YOU WHO SAID WE SHOULD FEEL AT HOME WITH EACH OTHER, NO HOSTING REQUIRED?  EXCEPT SPECIAL OCCASIONS OF COURSE.  IS IT A SPECIAL OCCASION???”

“Well, darling, I—”  The talk-show host cut himself off, speech functions shutting down mid-sentence as his neural circuit decided he needed to think a little longer.  He took the opportunity to sit up, smooth both hands down his chassis, and, in a stroke of what was definitely genius, start tip-toeing two fingers across the floor as he stretched an arm towards the pair of boots in front of the oven.

“It _could_ be a special occasion,” he purred as his hand reached its destination, stroking up the bare expanse of leg-bone between boot and briefs.

Papyrus shot three feet into the air.

His “AIIEEEEE!!!!” was cut short by his skull striking the ceiling; he’d barely hit the ground before Sans was there, hovering over him like an unmoving hummingbird.  A, err, _very naked_ hummingbird.

“shit, papyrus, you ok?  thought you were gonna bust through my floor like some kind of oversized candy-red beverage monster.”

“I AM UNHARMED!  MERELY STARTLED.”

“I am _so sorry_ _oh my god_.”

Sans glanced back at Mettaton’s distress screen and noodled arm and, apparently, saw something that warranted maximum smirk status.  He added one of his uncanny winks before turning back to not-leveraging his brother off the floor.

“glad to hear it.  hey, totally unrelated innocent question, but you’ve had T H E  T A L K with metts right?”

Furious digital blushing intensified.  “Of _course_ we’ve—”

“OH!  OH NO!  I COMPLETELY FORGOT!!”  Papyrus looked infinitely more distressed than he had upon literally smashing his cranium into hardwood.  “IT WASN’T IN THE MANUAL!!!”

“heh. manual. that’s a good one.”

“WHAT DO YOU— NO!!!”  Mettaton’s burning curiousity was momentarily overwhelmed by his extreme fondness for Papyrus’s bug-eyed outrage at Sans’s shit-eating grin.  “ABSOLUTELY NOT WHAT I MEANT!  YOU’RE SO DIRTY!  AND NAKED!!!!”  Stomp stompity stomp.  “SAAAAANNNSSS!!!”

“hey, i can say with complete honesty this time: his fault.”  He pointed at the blinking monitor-head and looked meaningfully at the stovetop.  “that too.”

“YOUR WELLNESS SPAGHETTI!!”  Alas, there went all hope of Papyrus having time for a certain touch-starved robot in the immediate future.  Re-cue pout mode.

“hey metts.”  Oh!  Sans was looking this way.  Mettaton straightened from slouch to Attentive Pose.  “my brother may be kinda touchy, but he’s not much of a touch-ee.  you follow?”

“UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Hm.  Yeah, no, that didn’t register as anything other than a pun.  “Come again, darling?”

“WHAT SANS _MEANS_ TO SAY,” clarified Papyrus, accenting his words with the clanging of pots and pans, “IS THAT I AM A PERFECTLY REASONABLE SKELETON WHO HAPPENS TO RATHER DISLIKE BONE FONDLING!!!”

“well.”  And just when it seemed Sans could not possibly wink harder.  “not unless he’s the fondler.”

“OH MY GOD!!!!!!!”  “ey don’t hit the sickling –”  “GO TO YOUR ROOM!!!!!”  “carry me?”

Processing.  Processing.

Ding!  Conclusion ready!

Result:  Oh stars above, how were these two so perfectly complementary, and how did a robot ever get so lucky?

Well.  It certainly wasn’t as if he _wanted_ the unparseable, too-much-data read-error sensory overload that seemed to happen every time he tried to both touch and be touched.  And it seemed that wasn’t a ghost and/or robotic error, either.  More like a general personality quirk?

As Mettaton watched his two partners bicker their way up the stairs, with Sans cradled like the baby he pretended to be and Papyrus swatting at his hands, he felt an extra measure of peace he hadn’t realized was missing.  Sure, he’d need to check in and have a proper conversation with Papyrus, sans puns (ahaha, ha, damn that contagious monster), but it sounded like he didn’t have to worry quite so much about balancing the scales of physical affection.  And even though Sans had already made it quite clear that he wasn’t a giver – and that was fine! knowing what was wanted and expected was a huge relief! – it was so much easier to believe knowing that his brother was the inverse.

With a smiley emoji for a display screen, Mettaton quietly clicked on the mental files tabulating who had done what for who how often, dragged them over to the recycling bin, and let them go.

Goodness, what a nice feeling.


End file.
